


Schrödinger's Cat in the instant that sky breaks open

by qwerty



Category: Alien series (1979 1986 1992)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ripley hasn't passed a night without dreaming since she woke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Schrödinger's Cat in the instant that sky breaks open

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aspen (silveraspen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveraspen/gifts).



The woods keep flickering: infrequent, almost imperceptible blinks jolting her back to alertness every time she starts to imagine she might lose herself in the illusion. Despite all the advances in tech since she woke from her 57-years long sleep, they have not managed to wholly eliminate the flickers, or the faint tang of metal and antiseptic detergent underlying the soft breeze from the only partially hidden air vent. Ripley supposes nobody else really wants to forget where they are.

Ripley hasn't passed a night without dreaming since she woke. Not all the dreams are of dying in all the different bloody ways she has learnt.

_Sometimes she dreams that she returns from a routine and uneventful journey and celebrates Amy's birthday with her, just as she had promised. These dreams were the worst, or so she had thought until the time she dreamt she comes home, puts her arms around Amy, and feels a sudden, sharp pounding in her chest that beats downwards until it is pulling and tearing inside her belly, and the creature rips free and falls on her daughter. _

Ripley passed the next two days tossing sleeplessly, afraid to dream again, and the two days after that hyped up on stimulants trying to keep from falling asleep. Then she got the jitters and nearly crashed her loader into another one, and realised that she wasn't ready to become so completely useless she couldn't even hold down a job like this one. That night she went to bed holding Jones and dreamt about waking up in the med bay again after her long hypersleep, Burke bringing her the cat and the creature bursting from her body again. She was relieved.

The medical officer keeps offering her pills for her sleep problems. She can't imagine sleep without dreams, or worse, being unable to wake from her dreams. The imperfections of the simulated environment are sufficient to distract her. This is not real, she keeps telling herself. Any minute, the world will flicker and dissolve, and she will be on the Nostromo again, joking with Kane and Dallas, Lambert, even Ash (the traitor, but he wouldn't be a traitor then, if...).

The woods flicker. Something dark ripples across the surface of a pond in the distance.

_Jones dreams too: brief, intense cat dreams, muttering darkly to himself, paws twitching urgently with the need to run. Ripley wonders, does he dream of hunting smaller creatures, or of being hunted by the creature that haunts her dreams? She strokes him soothingly, and he yawns and stretches in contentment as he wakes, showing off long, sharp teeth and flexing his claws. _

She dreamt she was a mouse one time, running through the crawlspaces and airducts of the Nostromo, pursued by something nameless and terrible that was not the creature, that had no form even in her imagination. (No, dreams don't have to make sense.)

She wonders if Jones dreams about being_ the creature_. Doesn't pursue that line of thought. Holds him. She can't blame him for the unsalvageable wreckage her psyche has become.

Ripley isn't entirely certain why she finds these woods comforting. She grew up in open country, and even when she moved to the bustle and grime of a spacing port for her training and then work, she continued to look at the sky with her daughter whenever she could find time. It's quiet, but there are many alternative simulations less enclosed, more restful.

The chitter, the scratching sounds and faint movements flicking in and out of the corner of her eye, the shadows, the looming trees. (It's a little like being back on the Nostromo, waiting for the creature to jump out at you from only god knows where.) Something scrapes on the ground behind her.

Damn it. She should change the environment to a different simulation. She should.

_Say what you will, Ripley is a smarter person than this. She had no delusions that taking Burke up on his offer to accompany him and the marines to LV-426 - the colony - to confront her fears would give her any respite from the dreams. But still she hoped, at least, that nothing would change - her dreams would be no better or worse. Instead, glimpsing the marines as they prepared for the mission only added more fodder for nightmares. The faceless colonists screaming as the creature hunted them down took on their faces. _

The loud young joker. The tough woman soldier and her partner. The quiet man with the weathered face. The gruff sergeant who evidently has little use for Lieutenant Gorman or Burke. She's only seen them in passing, but she's seen them die so many times, in graphic detail. So many times. It's exhausting.

Ripley is going to get up and pick another simulation. Something calming, more like home. (Wherever that is now.)

The flickers are sharper, the shadows darker. Something splashes and slips out of the pond.

This isn't supposed to happen. The simulations are generally static, or very nearly so. There is some ambient sound and general faint movements - whispering leaves, the hum of insects, dappled specks of sunlight moving across the ground as time passes - for some degree of verisimilitude, but nothing that should stand out, draw attention to itself.

Ripley stands, and turns her back on the forest projected on the wall. It's just light and recorded sounds and a wall. Nothing to be afraid of. She takes a step forward, towards the exit. There is a hiss, and a familiar click of claws on metal.

It's not possible. The creature was blasted into space. There's no way it could have followed her here, and even more, there's no way it could have passed all this time without showing itself.

She turns around and the woods flick finally off. Something thumps against the wall, and indents it from the other side. Again. And again.

She's dreaming. She's awake. She- She turns back to the exit, and sees it leering at her through the glass.

They say... they say...

Hypersleep is dreamless, they say. It is true, but nobody talks about the eternity stretching out in the moments before the sleep takes you, that cling and continue to tangle your mind in the instants before waking.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really happy for you original assigned writer, I'ma let you finish, but the pinch-hitter wrote the best story of all time. Pinch-hitters always do. /is a defaulting defaulter who defaults
> 
> (Sorry, assigned person and pinch-hitter person left holding the bag. Y'all rock, I suck. Happy holidays!)


End file.
